‘THE BARBIE MOVIE’ Poster Creation

This year, my good friend Alexander Miller completed his latest film, ‘The Barbie Movie,’ which I had the privilege to design the poster for. From the official description, it’s parts “parts documentary, visual essay, and personal narrative paying parodic homage to all things Barbie.”

Here’s a brief look at the development of the poster.

Sketches

I went through a few thumbnail sketches figuring out composition. I was largely inspired by Drew Struzan’s composition. In watching the film, a few stills popped out to me, mainly Pinky Sniper Barbie and nude Ken on the horse.

I ended up settling on the final design. In a normal setting, I would have done a complete ink of the design, then add colour, however, as you will be able to see in the time lapse video, I would add colour in at the same time.

Ink and colour

In a normal setting, I would have completed the final composition before going into adding line art and colour. I didn’t intend for the Jeep explosion or the ABLOW members to feature in the poster, however, as I finished the line art, it began to feel necessary that I fill in those spaces.

I have my own colour pallet that I often use, however, I took many cues from the specific pinks feature in the Barbie comics published by Marvel in the 90s.

From there, it was just a matter of rotating, flattening layers and moving things around for the horizontal poster.

Bonus

One version of the poster, which was not completed, featured various Kens spelling out ‘BARB’ in semaphore. They’re somewhat visible in the timelapse video.

The Kens were eventually omitted as it made the poster feel too busy, but it is here for your viewing pleasure. Just like the rest of the poster, it was done in blue non-photo pencils, so visibility may be limited.